MAURICE RIVER TWP. — As work crews prepare Route 55 for a coastal evacuation, a hurricane is making its way through the Caribbean and is expected to make landfall on Saturday.

This is the hypothetical situation that the New Jersey Department of Transportation, the New Jersey State Police, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority and the South Jersey Turnpike Authority were working under during their hurricane evacuation exercise on Thursday.

"We're having the crews actually go through the whole process as if a hurricane were coming a couple days from now — getting the experience of positioning the materials, barrels, cones, things like that — if we actually had to shut off a road," said Stephen Schapiro, spokesperson for the Department of Transportation.

For the statewide drill, work crews practiced setting up Contra Flow Plans — which reverses the traffic on a section of roadway — on coastal evacuation routes like the Garden State Parkway, Atlantic City Expressway, I-195, Route 72, Route 55 and Route 47.

Working on Route 55, the Department of Transportation work crews started setting up at the Cumberland County maintenance yard in Maurice River Township and headed down Route 55 — briefly shutting down the Exit 21 ramp during the exercise.

In a real storm event, Gov. Chris Christie would be the one to decide whether a Contra Flow Plan would be used on the important roadways of the state.

None of the routes were actually shut down during the exercise but it gave the work crews a chance to test out how smoothly setting up the evacuation route would go.

"In a worst-case scenario, you want to be able to move the people out and get them to safety if a storm were coming," Schapiro said.

Department of Transportation crews carry laminated plans on where exactly to put the cones when implementing the Contra Flow Plan.

"The purpose is to get them out of the storm surge areas — the areas of the highest winds — to get them into what is going to be a much safer area than along the coast," said Bill Kingsland, director of operations for the south region in the department.

Residents traveling up Route 55 would travel north to Route 49 and away from possible flooding.

Approximately 300 personnel staged more than 5,000 cones, drums and signs during Thursday's drill throughout the state.

It even began to rain during the morning's drill in Maurice River Township, just like it might during real storm preparations.

"It gives it a more realistic effect," Schapiro said. "Obviously, if we had a storm coming, the weather could be clear a couple days before the storm or you might have some rain. It's just another variable that would have to be taken into account in an actual emergency."

The evacuation exercise started on Monday, where the department and the state police tested out their communications.

Communication is just as important as setting up the cones, according to Schapiro. One of the things the department learned during recent storm events like Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Irene was that the police and department were using different radio systems.

To practice setting up the evacuation routes themselves, Department of Transportation work crews from Elmer were used in Thursday's exercise on Route 55.

"We recognize that the crews that are based immediately along the coast, they have family members, they have personal situations that are much more impacted by the storm," Kingsland said. "We don't want to have to try and rely upon them to set up the safety to be out there so we bring crews from the western half of the state. If necessary, we bring crews from up north."

Through these drills, the department is able to refine its process and fix any kinks.

One such kink was discovered Thursday morning when the pins holding the truck gates were stuck.

"It probably delayed us 10 to 15 minutes and that's not the end of the world but that's 10 or 15 minutes more that we can have this Contra Flow Plan in effect and that's a lot of cars that we can get away from the shore," Kingsland said.

Over the coming weeks, officials will go over the results of the drills and see where to refine the Contra Flow Plan preparation.

"We have implemented elements of the Contra Flow Plan during large-scale evacuations for Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Irene," said Col. Rick Fuentes, superintendent of the state police and director of the state Office of Emergency Management, on Thursday. "These experiences informed the plan revisions we are testing today."